Clutter.... and memories

We have three floors to pack and sort here at St Pauls Mews and, yesterday, we began to sift through cupboards and boxes in the studio. When we moved here six years ago it had been so hectic that we had no opportunity to do this.

And of course the process is a journey back in time….Coming across letters, cards, bric a brac and memories from our two lives, both separate and joined. When I had come to boarding school in England from Tanzania, on my own, as a 9 year old child, I had a little brown suitcase in which I had tucked some clothes, the odd cassette tape of African music, a few toys, and that was all. Later, when I qualified in Medicine in 1980 and began the transition from student to doctor, the suitcase was still with me, albeit battered and scratched. It journeyed to Iona in 1998 when I met Judy, but finally fell apart when I got divorced in 1999.

Its staggering how much clutter we’ve accumulated…and now we’ve begun the process of sifting through it all, giving much away and discarding much too. But it feels good doing this, even though it takes time; as if the clearing away can lead to new possibilities, a renewal, a fresh start and a host of memories that emerge from the shadows, like dreams.

“Footfalls echo in the memory, down the passage we did not take, towards the door we never opened, into the rose garden.”

TS Eliot

Nicholas

Yesterday, surrounded by music and lyrics, reviews of performances I have done, and hundreds of lovingly written opening night cards and notes from two decades of my career as a professional actress, I was quite overwhelmed. Partly at the outpourings of well-wishes, partly at the praise my work received critically, but mostly by the stark reality of time. 

My one-woman show, Angels Unawares, was nearly 20 years ago. 

Nearly half my lifetime ago.

There is a power in actually touching memorabilia, it is as though in so doing I am transported to other times, yesterday I saw the faces of people I had journeyed with, the places I had visited, the back stages and dressing rooms, the sounds of the orchestras, the highlights and the lowlights of my life in the theatre flooded back to me in wave after wave of recollection. 

In slowing down enough, in creating space and time to order our lives, we are finding what we can let go of, what is superfluous, what is unnecessary. And, yesterday, I found that, although I have not been an actress for this past decade, it is still an enormous part of who I am, who I have been, and who I will yet be.

The gentle sorting of my life in the process of moving illuminates moments, reminding me to pay attention, reminding me to give thanks.

Judy